Wearing new white Sperry Top-Siders, crisp white pleated pants, a double-breasted, six button blue blazer, a red ascot and a jaunty captain's hat set at precisely the right rake upon my head, I finally felt ready to approach the new 2015 Kia K900. It's not so much a car as a road yacht, the sort of vessel upon which the crew can set a westerly course toward the horizon and then retire to the fantail for cocktails and an impromptu skeet tournament. Too bad the cabin is carpeted. There should be teak decking down there.

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"Ahoy matey," I shouted to my nephew who would accompany on this voyage as the Gilligan to my Skipper. "Avast and belay," he replied, sounding sufficiently nautical.

Covered in white Napa leather and trimmed in genuine wood, the interior of this big, rear-drive, V-8-powered Kia schooner feels roomy and luxurious. The front captain's chairs look right off the flying bridge of a fine cabin cruiser, while the VIP package option equips the rear lido deck with heated and ventilated couches that can be power adjusted a bajillion ways. There are even separate ventilation and entertainment controls embedded in the rear center armrest so passengers in the rear cabin need not pester the crew for those adjustments.

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Firmly positioned in the pilot position, I spent a solid 12 minutes fine-tuning the seating position before we left port. The 5.0-liter, 420-hp, direct-injection V-8 fired instantly and settled a quiet, trawling idle. It's the same engine Hyundai uses in its largest cars, the Genesis and Equus sedans. And it's lashed to the same ZF-made eight-speed automatic transmission used in those Hyundais and several other road liners.

From bow to stern, the K900 runs 200.6 inches long. That's 2.5-inches shorter than its sister ship, the Equus, through they both ride on the same keel: a 119.9-inch wheelbase.

"Arrggh," my nephew said as he stared at the dash. "There be some Audi here and BMW over there. Kia isn't reinventing the tiller here!" I don't know how this pirate got on board my yacht, but he's right: Much of the K900's controls and elements are derivative. The shifter is the same sort of bizarre and frustrating chadburn that has plagued BMWs over the past few years. And the graphics on the large LCD screen at the center of the dash look to be straight out of the German charting inventory. They're controlled by a dial behind the shifter that is suspiciously iDrive-like. The instrumentation is displayed on another LCD screen, and it blazes in glorious colors. When the K900 is operating in "Sport" mode the needles of the virtual tach and speedo disappear in favor of analog displays—which seems counterintuitive.

All the big yachts in this class carry lots of gadgets. And it's easy to mistake some of these, such as lane-departure warning systems, cameras that look down every side, and radar-based cruise control– as luxurious elements. But those are just gimmicks atop the essential engineering, and essential engineering is where the K900 comes up short. In a class that's increasingly dominated by aluminum structures, it's still a big, steel unibody. Active suspension systems and adjustable air springs are increasingly common, but they're not aboard the K900 (though air suspension is offered on the car overseas). The multi-link front and rear independent suspension systems use aluminum castings, but that's becoming ordinary even in cheaper cars.

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Once at sea, it became apparent that the old-school engineering is the K900's greatest limitation. It doesn't so much cut through the road's waves and ride atop them. The steering is so devoid of feedback that it feels like a rudder stirring in a vat of oatmeal. This is an amazingly quiet machine, but a remote one. The K900 needs an injection of racing skiff DNA.

That's not to say it's slow. This is a 4500-pound boat, but it has big sails. That 420-hp engine should help it steam to 60 mph in under six seconds and power through the quarter-mile in just under 14 seconds.

While a V-6 version will show up in a few months, the current K900 comes to America as a V-8-only machine. With the VIP package aboard, which sets up the rear seat as one of the most comfortable cabins in all of yachting, the K900 caries a $66,400 price tag. That's not bad for a luxury liner about the size of a Mercedes S-class, but it's still a lot for a Kia.

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After a while roaming from port to port alongside me, my nephews moved to the back seat. "Wow," he said. "It's a lot nicer back here. That's why the Thurston and Lovey never asked if they could pilot the Minnow. Next time I'm wearing the ascot."

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